Opinions are like Facebook pages — everybody’s got one. But what if you’re trying to do more than update people on where you’re eating? As a marketing manager, you have to create content for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok plus, any other social media platforms that your company uses. You also have to keep track of how many times to post per day, which can make your head spin.
We’ve been there, so we created this guide to help you get started.
It’s important to have a baseline if you’re just getting started with your social media strategy. Each social network is different, so it pays to know when to start posting. From there, you can narrow down better times that suit your customers. You can use buyer personas, platform demographics, surveys, and even your competition to determine which social media sites your customers prefer.
How Often You Should Post On Social Media
There’s no silver bullet for posting on social media. The internet is open 24/7 and all the social networks (aka socials) have their own algorithms with their own priorities. This can be extremely intimidating if you’re just getting started with a social media marketing strategy, but it doesn’t have to be. You can start with a baseline and curate content for customers as you learn more about them.
Finding a Baseline
Learning a good time to post to your news feeds can be the hardest part of developing social media strategies. Use these baselines from HootSuite as starting points for your social media content, taking note of which posts get the most interaction and when. This will help you refine your social media strategy and tailor it to your customers’ tastes.
10:00 AM (PST) on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays is the best overall time for social media posts. However, you can get more granular depending on which platforms your customers use most.
Target these times when creating a posting strategy:
- Facebook – Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:00 AM and 12:00 PM
- Instagram – Wednesdays at 11:00 AM
- Twitter – Mondays and Thursdays at 8:00 AM
- LinkedIn – Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 9:00 AM
TikTok is the new kid on the block and its times are more varied. According to Hootsuite, the best times to post are:
- Tuesday at 7:00 AM
- Thursday at 10:00 AM
- Friday at 5:00 AM
Remember that these times are for getting started. As your presence grows, you’ll be able to track which times and days of the week get the most interactions. This information will help you enhance your social media management efforts and increase your engagement rate.
What about time zones?
10:00 AM in Sacramento isn’t the same 10:00 AM in Boston (don’t even get us started on Melbourne). So how do you decide which time zone to use? The key to time zones is to prioritize where your customers are at. That means that if your medical technology business is based out of Boston, but your customers are in Sacramento, then you should be posting based on Sacramento time.
Things become more complicated if your customers are more spread out. Are you a medical technology company with customers in Boston, Sacramento, and Melbourne? You’ll need to publish multiple posts per day in order to best reach them all. Failure to do so could lead to a drop in engagement and loss of interest for your audience. On the other hand, more posts in your news feed can attract new customers for your MedTech product.
Navigating the Social Media Landscape
Chances are that you didn’t know how important geography would be in marketing your healthcare tech business. It’s enough to make any social media marketer’s head spin on its axis. Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone.
Baker Marketing Laboratory has been helping clients with their digital healthcare marketing for over a decade. We’ve worked with medical software, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies to help boost their online presence and increase their customer base.
Interested in what Baker Marketing Laboratory can do for your healthcare business? Schedule a free marketing review today!
Finding Your Social Media Target Audience
You need to figure out what platforms your customers are using in order to effectively focus your time and efforts. After all, what’s the point of posting on Instagram if your current and future customers are all on Twitter? Fortunately, you can find your social media target audience with a little bit of imagination and some research.
1. Create Buyer Personas
One of the best ways to figure out where your customers are is to create buyer personas. A buyer persona is an imaginary representation of your ideal customer. But “imaginary” doesn’t mean “made up.” These personas are based on real data you’ve gathered from your customers along with some educated guesses about who they are.
Here at Baker Labs, we create buyer personas for all of our clients. This helps us understand who we’re trying to attract and where to target our efforts. Along with social media, they help us create high-quality websites, ads, and content marketing such as blog posts for our clients.
2. Learn Social Media Platform Demographics
Buyer personas can help you learn which social media platforms to use. By knowing your personas’ backgrounds, motivations, and values, you can create content that appeals to them and draws them down the sales funnel.
According to the Pew Research Center, age demographics of different social break down like this:
- Facebook: 30 to 49-year-olds
- Instagram: 18 to 29-year-olds
- Twitter: 18 to 29-year-olds
- LinkedIn: 30 to 49-year-olds
- TikTok: 10 to 19-year-olds
- Pinterest: 56 to 64-year-olds
Knowing which demographics prefer which social platforms can help you save time and focus your energy where it’s needed most. Simply knowing a few important demographics can help you focus your efforts.
Click here to read our deep dive into social media demographics and how social media marketing can help your healthcare business!
3. See Where Your Competitors Are Most Active
When in doubt, look at what your competitors are doing. Are they:
- On certain social media platforms?
- Using a certain tone of voice?
- Using certain hashtags?
- Getting a lot of interactions?
If so, then use them as inspiration to boost your own social media marketing efforts.
4. Send Out Customer Surveys
Data and statistics are always good, but nothing beats genuine interaction with your customers. You can create surveys to learn who your customers really are, what social networks they use, and what kind of content they prefer. With this information in hand, you’ll be able to create content that keeps them coming back for more.
Partnering with Baker Marketing Laboratory
At Baker Marketing Laboratory, we understand that even the social media marketer can use some help. That’s why we’re more than a healthcare digital marketing agency — we’re your partners in the world of health tech digital marketing. We act as guides, helping our clients navigate the digital world with a “digital-first” approach that brings customers to you. We’ve worked in all facets of the healthcare industry and would love to partner with you.
Are you ready to increase your social media presence? Schedule a free marketing review with us today!
To get started with social media marketing, use baseline times and days when beginning your social media marketing efforts. From there, you can study your customers’ behavior to determine better times to post on different platforms. You can use buyer personas, social network demographics, competitors’ tactics, and surveys to help determine which sites your customers prefer as well as what content resonates with them best.
Baker Marketing Laboratory has spent years helping healthcare businesses find their footing in the digital world. Through a combination of inbound digital marketing and powerful messaging strategies, we help you craft a marketing campaign that resonates with your ideal customer. Contact us today to schedule a call and learn the difference we can make for your business.
